Liberia, 1989
by Harpokrates
Summary: Liquid meets Solidus deep in the grasslands: the worst kind of family reunion. Ignores The Phantom Pain canon. Rated for violence against children.


Liberia, 1989

Harpokratest

Liquid Snake shifted slowly, careful to keep the dry, dry grass under him from rustling. The war camp was probably two hundred meters away, but on a quiet night like this, even the sound of grass in the wind might draw attention.

He couldn't see any weaponry heavier than an AK knock-off, and even those were scarce. It was unlikely that they had infrared or night vision, but he couldn't take any chances. Bright blurs of fire hid most of the camp from sight. He shoved his heavy night vision goggles onto his forehead and squinted into the distance. The dark shrouded everything, but he could make out the little figures based on their movement. Most of them were crowded around the fires, for warmth perhaps. Even in Liberia, the nights were cold, and with no moisture in the air during winter, the heat from the day quickly dissipated. Even in his flight suit and thermal underwear, Liquid still felt a chill, and he was nearly full grown. Children, they were definitely children, adults didn't constantly move like that, would be freezing.

Sighing, he let the NVGs drop back over his eyes. The world was illuminated in green, alien and serene except for the distant cries of animals. The children around the fire were blotted out by the light, but Liquid disregarded them. The patrols around the camp wouldn't change until midnight, at least, when the adults woke up. Only a few children were guarding the perimeter. Liquid circled the camp from a safe distance. He only had his Browning and a combat knife, and didn't want to risk a fire fight.

Besides, this was a stealth mission. If he was caught now, by a bunch of starving children, he would probably just let them shoot him. Better that than to live with the shame of being caught by a bunch of war infants, or the retribution that the SIS would drop on him for lingering after a mission for personal reasons.

He slipped past a sleeping boy and into the camp proper. It was organized by someone who had no idea how to make it difficult for infiltrators to find what they were looking for. There were twelve tents in total, laid out in a rough square around two rickety sheds, likely for storage or dining. The camp was clearly still in construction; there were almost no fortifications, and he suspected that the children just slept out in the open. Unwise, especially during a war. Especially with child soldiers.

He saw the tent up ahead, and slipped his NVGs off. There was more than enough light to see inside the camp. He crept forward, sticking to the shadows in between the tents, pausing every few meters to listen for footsteps.

The thick canvas of the tents rustled in the breeze. Liquid held his breath and ducked into the shadows cast by the structure. It was nearly identical to the other canvas monstrosities, same size, same shape, except this one had a neat, precise snake drawn on the door. It looked like crayon. According to the official reports, this tent was usually empty around this time of night, its occupant occupied in the mess hall with the ad hoc cinema. He slid past the flaps into the suffocating dark, ducking under the neat hitch holding them shut.

Liquid pulled his NVGs over his eyes. The tent was plain, spartan but not barren. The interior was roughly three and a half meters square, with a cot shoved in one corner. Two chairs sat desolate in the middle, with a cheap folding table between them. Next to the cot was a small wash basin propped on a stool, with a fragment of mirror pinned to the canvas 'wall'. A bare light bulb hung in the middle of the tent, hooked up to a mass of wire and batteries.

Liquid crouched in a shadowy corner, concealed by the hanging canvas of the tent. He heard scraping footsteps across the dirt outside. Heavy, booted. There was a lighter pair as well, a child's, in worn down trainers. Liquid held his breath.

The child's steps continued up the pathway, but the boots stopped. He heard the hitch slide open, and pulled further into the corner.

The man flicked on the light bulb. It cast a dim light around the tent. Liquid held his breath. The man glanced in the mirror, rubbing a hand wearily over his jaw. He grabbed a bar of cheap soap from the rim of the basin by the cot, and dunked it into the tepid water. Suds foamed over his bristles as he scrubbed it across his chin. He picked up a cheap disposable razor, and dragged it down his face.

Liquid stepped into the light.

"Child soldiers, Solidus?" The shadows in the tent clung to Liquid like water, pooling around his feet.

Solidus met his eyes in the mirror, his razor pressed against his cheek. He sighed, and dropped it back on the small wash basin. A thin line of blood dripped down his chin. He looked like he always did, like a younger version of Big Boss, like an older version of himself.

"Liquid," he grabbed a towel and wiped the soap off of his face, "did the Patriots send you to kill me?"

Liquid grabbed a rickety old chair from the corner of the crowded tent and straddled it backwards, his elbows propped on the backrest. "No, I'm escorting some UN bigwigs down to try and talk peace."

Solidus took the other chair. "Should I expect them to swing by here and shout at me about the Geneva Convention?" He pulled a flask from the bag slumped on the floor and offered it to Liquid.

"I just fly the helicopter." He took the flask, but didn't drink from it. He wanted to be completely sober for this. "What are you doing with child soldiers?"

"You don't beat around the bush, do you?" Solidus's chair creaked as he leaned back in it.

"Are you trying to be Big Boss?" Liquid said quietly.

Solidus snorted. "I'm not the one with the inferiority complex, Liquid." He held out a hand, and Liquid dropped the flask into it, scowling. "Does it bother you?"

"The child soldiers?"

Solidus nodded, taking a swig from the bottle. It smelled like cheap whiskey, and the sting of it made Liquid's eyes water.

"I don't care." He scratched at the back of his head, carding his fingers through his buzzcut.

"Look at us, brother." said Solidus, copying the motion. His hair was longer, unkempt, but it was the same muddy shade of brown as Liquid's. "We're clones, man-made, sterile. Nothing we do will be passed on to the next generation. No ideals, no memes, nothing. We are tabula rasa, blank slates."

"So?"

"So? So," Solidus leaned forward, his eyes bright. "what we will be remembered by? Who will carry on our legacies?"

"Does it really matter that much?"

"It should. To you, more than me. After all, do you really think that the inferior one will be remembered? Don't you want to know if we are our own beings, or just someone else's creation?"

"Solidus..." Liquid sighed. The light bulb overhead popped and flickered. He pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes, the really cheap kind, unfiltered, and cut with grass. He had picked them up at a little bombed-out corner store in Voinjama, during the trip down.

"Outside," Solidus grunted at him.

Liquid stood without acknowledging him, and brushed aside the thick canvas. It was cooler outside, less stuffy. He lit a cigarette and inhaled, feeling the burn deep in his chest. The wind blew sharply, taking with it the haze of smoke Liquid exhaled through his nose. It was a trick he spent months trying to pull off without coughing back in flight school, behind the barracks.

The dirt crunched, and he glanced up. A little boy with light hair and a dark tan carrying an overlarge submachine gun was glaring at him from the path. Liquid stared back.

The boy held out his hand in that demanding way children had. Liquid tapped the ash off the end of the cigarette, and handed it to the boy.

"Smoking will stunt your growth." He said when the kid started coughing. He plucked the cig out of the boy's fingers and took a deep drag off it.

The kid scowled, and pushed past him and tapped on the thick canvas.

"Papay," he had a thick accent, and Liquid wasn't familiar with the local slang, but that sounded suspiciously like a paternal term.

Solidus stepped out. He looked calmer, less wild-eyed. He smiled down at the kid.

"Jack," he said warmly.

"Jonnie fell asleep," he said with all the gravity a child could muster.

Solidus frowned. The movement was barely perceptible, but Liquid had spent years studying body language.

"Well then," Solidus smiled kindly. It looked wrong on his face. "We'll just have to take care of that won't we?"

The kid, Jack, nodded. Solidus took the submachine gun and checked the cartridge, before removing the clip. He handed the clip to the kid, who extracted a single bullet. Solidus loaded it by hand.

"Come on, then, _brother_ ," Solidus gestured widely and clapped him on the shoulder, "we can make it a family reunion."

Liquid shrugged off his hand.

Solidus scowled, and the fire glittered in the dark parts of his eyes.

"Let's go, Jack." He nodded sharply towards a mass of bodies on the far side of camp. Now that his night vision was adjusting, Liquid could make out the vague features of sleeping children, huddled as close as they dared to the fire crackling in the intersection of the camp. His boots scraped on the dirt and he paused for a second to pick a rock out of the treads. Jack, the boy, lingered behind Solidus, his hand clenched in the man's shirttail.

Solidus looked like the devil in the firelight. Liquid supposed that made him the devil's little brother. Or his son.

"Well, well, boys," Solidus clapped his hands, loudly, and the children jolted awake, scrambling up from the cardboard mats and ragged newspapers scattered on the dirt, "wake up. I've got a surprise for you."

The kids lined up in front of him, rubbing their bleary eyes and fighting down yawns. Most of them were black, Jack and a few scattered pale faces were the exception. All but one of them had emaciated limbs and bloated stomachs. Jack was the exception, again, but even he was skinny.

Solidus paced in front of them.

"Do any of you know why I woke you up?" He sounded like a kindly grandfather, like it really pained him to do what he was doing.

One of Solidus' soldiers, an adult, came up behind Liquid.

"What's he doing?" The man whispered.

Liquid shrugged.

"I'll tell you," and his voice dropped the sweet undertones, became cruel, "one of you, one of your brothers was trying to get us all killed!"

"Oh Jesus, not this again," the man behind Liquid grumbled, "he always has to make a show out of it."

Liquid's eyes flickered over the crowd of children. Some looked tired, some looked scared, but most looked bored.

"This," Solidus spat, reaching into the crowd and pulling a short boy out of the huddled mass, "this _traitor_ fell asleep at his post!" He pushed the kid to the ground and the crowd parted around him. The boy landed hard on his side, but pushed himself up on his forearms and scrabbled backwards.

"What do you have to say?"

The boy licked his lips and his eyes flickered through the crowd. He twisted his head around and his scared, blue eyes met Liquid's for a second. Liquid scoffed, rolled his eyes, and looked away.

"Nothing to say?" Solidus pushed the boy onto his back with the toe of his boot. He held up the submachine gun like a beacon. The children followed his hand, up so that their heads were practically nestling against their backs. The boy on the ground let out a high, keening wail.

"Who wants the honor?"

As one, the children raised their hands.

"See, brother," Solidus turned to him, eyes bright with fervor, "this is power. This is my legacy."

He dropped the arm holding the submachine gun to his side. Jack grabbed the gun by the magazine and pushed it up, pushed up Solidus' arm, so that the boy was pinned by the sights.

"That's good, Jack."

Solidus grinned, the boy sobbed. He pulled the trigger. A startling loud burst of gunfire echoed through the empty grassland.

Liquid looked away and dropped his cigarette to the ground, grinding it under the heel of his boot.

The kids broke into murmurs, the kind of noise that happened when there should have been a roar, but exhaustion had claimed them all. Solidus smiled down at Jack and ruffled his messy hair.

"You did good," he spared a generous hand to gesture across the rabble, "you all did good. I'm proud of you."

The man behind Liquid pushed his way forwards and whispered in Solidus' ear.

"Ah, yes," he murmured offhandedly. Then to the children, "I'm going to reward you. You can watch a movie tonight, and sleep in the mess."

The kids cheered and chattered excitedly as another man, one Liquid had barely noticed, stepped into the firelight and lead them away.

"Go on, Jack," Solidus pushed the boy forwards gently.

"But, papay-"

"Jack."

The kid shrank, visibly, and followed along with the others. He was quickly jostled forwards in the group, towards the front.

Liquid lit another cigarette.

"Those will kill you." Solidus plucked it out of his mouth and stamped it out in the dirt. Liquid glared at him and reached for his pack. Empty. He frowned.

"What happened to the boy I remember? You were so driven."

"Big Boss built a nation. Did you know?"

Solidus nodded. "The peace talks," he said the word like it was a slur, "called for Outer Heaven's dissolution. South Africa wants the land back."

"Imagine," Liquid snorted, "Big Boss brought to his knees by bureaucrats and UN peacekeepers."

"He made his mark on the world. Hell, they've written books about him; a megalomania disorder is named after him. And look at us," he picked a speck of dust off of Liquid's collar, "government secrets. They send us in for wet jobs; when they can't risk losing a real person. We aren't anything unless we can leave a legacy to prove it."

"Don't touch me." Liquid shrugged him off and pulled his sleeve up over his wrist. 2347 hours. "I need to go."

"Then leave."

"What, no heart-warming goodbyes?"

"Only this," Solidus grabbed his arm, "they'll leave you to die. One day. And then you'll see I'm right."

Liquid shoved him away and turned away from the camp, walking through the flickering darkness.

"You have to leave a legacy, brother!" Solidus shouted after him. "Make your mark on the world."

Liquid ignored him, and vanished into the dark of the night.

.

.

.

And eventually, Liquid thought, branded under the hot sun, squinting up at the carrion birds through two black eyes, Solidus was absolutely right.

* * *

This is unbetaed, please tell me if you see any mistakes.


End file.
